


Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, in the Snow

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Doctors & Physicians, Drug Use, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Languages and Linguistics, Pop Culture, Romance, Skiing, Snow, Snow Day, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:07:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 5,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8891944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: No snowflake is alike. Here are thirteen.





	1. Chapter 1

“Come on, sleepyhead, time to get up,” Mary said from somewhere above his head. It was somewhere near and he lazily opened an eye just enough to gauge the distance to her waist and he reached over to pull her closer.

“Enough of that. They updated the report, we got 6 inches overnight, all powder. Perfect conditions,” she said. He heard her but he preferred to focus on how smooth her skin was, how warm, how her camisole had ridden up with a little assistance from him and how it felt to trace the Greek alphabet, what he remembered of it, on the curve of her hip. _Alpha_ , _beta_ , _delta_ , _epsilon_ …

“We already have perfect conditions. Right here,” he said, blinking against the light leaking around the curtains, shifting over and kissing her shoulder.

“Jed, we came here to ski, it’s nearly 9.” He heard what she said and how, that little breath she took as his beard tickled her, the tension as she tried to decide whether to pull away or sink back against him.

“Maybe you did. I came here for this, to convince you to stay in bed, to drink hot chocolate and lick the whipped cream off your mouth, to fuck to my wife without worrying about the pager going off,” he murmured and he felt her agree, that wonderful, silky pliancy in her body before her busy mind would allow it. He pressed closer, let her feel how he wanted her.

“Now you’re not being fair,” she gasped softly and arched her back against him.

“We can ski later, Mary, the snow isn’t going anywhere,” he said, his hands going everywhere. It started to snow again, heavily, while they were otherwise, very deliciously and carnally occupied, but they didn’t notice, at least Mary didn’t and he saved the news of the 4 additional inches until she came out of the shower. It was too late then to do anything but drink the hot chocolate and clean up the whipped cream before it could stain the sheets.


	2. Chapter 2

“Jesus, Byron! I’m not taking any more of your transfers—you snowed the last three and we had to put Mr. Summers on a monitor,” Mary exclaimed into the phone. 

It was a beige plastic number, circa 1990, still far more youthful than most of the unit’s accouterments. The administration had decided it made more sense to invest the capital campaign money in the front lobby, where there was an eight foot Douglas fir with twinkling white lights and silver baubles galore, and down the hallways with their tastefully neutral seascapes and nearly immobile, industrial settees. The units, especially the sixth floor, were more… basic, which extended to the snacks they kept at the nursing station. That was why Jed was forced to eat Bravos instead of Doritos and knock-off Sno-balls, while Mary eviscerated their colleague in the ER. Jed wasn’t too worried about the actual patients, since he and Mary ran a tight ship and Bridget was charge, but he didn’t give Byron very good odds of stepping away from the phone with his manhood intact.

“You send another one like that, I’m coming down there and you will not be happy to see me,” Mary was finishing up, in her cold, almost hissing tone that was saved largely for Byron or security guards who thought she owed them one. God, she was brilliant—as a doctor, of course, but also like a Valkyrie, like Kali, like Black Widow if they hadn’t cut all her good scenes and given them all to those ambivalent Steve-loves-Bucky-but-we’re-not-supposed-to-say shots.

“Hey, I saved one for you,” he said, tossing her the last pack of pinkish Sno-balls, which he’d decided were actually the real thing, just also circa 1990. She caught it and rolled her eyes.

“I told you, I brought homemade pfeffernusse, if you’d just be patient,” she said, less irritated with him than running off the fumes of her Byron-inspired ire.

“Have you met me? I’m a doctor exactly because I can’t be patient,” he quipped and smirked. She gave a long-suffering sigh and threw the plastic wrapped package back at him. He caught it and she raised an eyebrow as she walked by, her hips swaying just a little. It was obscured by her scrubs and her slightly dingy white coat, but he’d made a study of her, so he didn’t miss a thing.

“Well, finally, the truth. I’ll save you a few, in case you want something good later,” she said in a lovely, enticing tone of voice. Bridget wasn’t around, probably checking on the last admission, so he could let himself smile the way he wanted to, the way she wanted him to.

“Mmm. I’ll have to save some room then,” he said. He didn’t bother to wink, it was wasted on her.


	3. Chapter 3

“Stop wriggling around so much,” Mary said tiredly. She wished she’d done laundry over the weekend so she wasn’t stuck with her worst set of scrubs and her most annoying pair of underwear in what now looked to be the longest drive home ever.

“If your car wasn’t designed for midgets, I’d be fine, Mary,” Jed snapped. They were post-call, it was to be expected, though he was usually a bit more on the loose and flirtatious side after a sleepless night, but it had been a particularly awful night, of tedium interspersed with near-death and a lot of dodging feculent vomit, so she would ordinarily have cut him some slack but she was equally exhausted and they hadn’t moved in the past twenty minutes, except for his relentless squirming.

Clay had okayed them to leave over an hour ago, since the snow was picking up, but they’d both dawdled (Jed substantially more) and then it had taken a good 10 minutes to clear the snow off her midget-mobile. By the time they got out of the parking lot, Mary had already decided it was a terrible idea and that they should have just tried to find a spare bed or couch in the hospital, but it was too late. At least she’d gone to the bathroom before they left.

“Just. Please. Give me a break. I know we’re both tired and we’re stuck here, but fidgeting isn’t going to help. The tank is full, why don’t you try to plug in your phone and put on a playlist,” she said, striving for civility. Maybe it was that or the way she swallowed a yawn, tapping her fingertips on her lip, or the way she arched her back in the seat, which did do largely positive things for her figure, even partially concealed by a half-zipped parka and scrubs, but Jed made a sound like “sorry” and rummaged in his bag for a few minutes before plugging in the iPhone.

“That’s pretty,” she said, as the Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas “Greensleeves” started playing.

“Yeah. Sorry I kept us late, I shouldn’t have, not when you were giving me a ride,” he said, somehow managing to lean back with an arm resting on the cold window as if he were watching the sunset in Aruba. She had a brief, involuntary fantasy of his other hand making its way to her thigh and felt herself blush.

“S’okay. You couldn’t have known we were getting a blizzard,” she said.

“Still,” he said and she looked over at him more directly. She could, because they were not moving at all, and there were no plows in sight. He looked tired, like she did, but like he belonged in her car, his eyes resting appreciatively on her, smiling. He was getting grey at the temples, she saw it in the weirdly diffuse light of the storm, but it suited him.

“Well, you lucked out with shot-gun and I might fall asleep otherwise, so, tell me a story,” she said.

“A bedtime story? Mary Phinney, what a request!” he said, laughing at his own suggestive tone. That woke her up, that laugh and the tone, the way his slender fingers drummed on the window-frame. The drive took four hours but they shortened it by only making one stop.


	4. Chapter 4

“Mary, clinic is cancelled. Just stop refreshing. They don’t need you to snowshoe in to the ER. Emma’s on and Sam too. They’ll be fine,” Jed said, standing barefoot in their tiny kitchen. Mary had still gotten up at 5:30 am as if she was headed into work, even though it had been snowing heavily since midnight, on top of what had come down the day before. They were closing in on 2 feet and there were drifts up to 4… She kept talking about how it could be cleared, the T would still be running. He had never been so glad to get an automated message in his life.

“I feel bad, I could get there,” she said. She was diligent and intrepid and he wondered if she’d been like this during snow days as a kid. Maybe he’d text Caroline and ask.

“Yeah, but none of the patients or staff can or will try, so you’d be there all alone and I’d be here all alone. Try to relax and enjoy it. That hand surgeon’s flight was canceled too, you’re not missing anything important,” he said, pushing back a loose curl over her ear, letting his hand rest on her neck, wiggle under the collar of her flannel bathrobe.

“Except for these,” he added, pushing the plate of chocolate chip pancakes in front of her. “And before you say anything, I can think of a lot of ways to burn off the extra calories.” She huffed a little at that but she still took a sizable bite. They had a bunch of sidewalk to shovel and they tried to do Bridget’s too, since she wasn’t up to it anymore, but he’d loaded the pancakes up with extra Ghirardelli chips so he was sure there would be more vigorous exercise in their future, possible preceding a wonderful afternoon nap in the slowly receding light the snow reflected.


	5. Chapter 5

“What is that?” Mary asked skeptically. She even put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips and he almost couldn’t be bothered to answer her question. Her nose was red from blowing it all day, so he thought better of his impulse to kiss her while she made snow angels.

“Daikon. That you didn’t use in that turnip cake recipe,” he said.

“That’s from three months ago! I thought we threw that out,” she said. He admitted it, it wasn’t much of a snowman, but he’d gotten bored with snowblowing and the new neighbor’s kids, Alycia and Diego had been messing around in their front yard sort of aimlessly and he’d invited them over to work on a surprise for Dr. Mary, who was stuck inside with a cold.

“Well, we didn’t. I do think the crisper in the fridge is mis-named though. Anyway, we didn’t have any carrots and I was trying to go as authentic as possible for the kids,” he explained.

“For the kids?” she repeated, taking in the jauntily tied Burberry scarf his mother had given him for his birthday and the tongue depressor sticking out of the general mouth-area.

“Okay, it was a group effort. We can get some carrots the next time we’re out but I honestly don’t know where we’re supposed to pick up a corncob pipe,” he said. “They had fun and you had a nap without me pestering you, so it’s all good, right?”

She started to smile and nod but was interrupted by an escalating series of sneezes, ladylike enough to pass for an etude until the last one.

“Back to bed with you. I shouldn’t have let you come out to see,” he said, guiding her forward with a hand at her back. “You want to see a snowman, we’ll put on ‘Frosty.’”


	6. Chapter 6

“Mary, he’s here, hurry up” Caroline called up the stairs. Mary wished again that Emma had come over to get ready but since she’d agreed to help decorate for the dance, it was Mary solo, hoping that her eye make-up looked suitably smoky and not like a sick raccoon. Caroline, currently howling up the stairs at her, had done her hair, so that part looked good at least. She’d had second thoughts about the dress—too sparkly, too princessy, too too, but it was too late to change it and she didn’t have anything remotely appropriate as a back-up. She took a deep breath and decided to hope for the best. Jed had seen her after gym class and they’d stayed up all night at the back of the bus on the band trip, so he couldn’t be too disappointed.

“Oh. Mary. Wow,” he said and then just seemed to run out of things to say, a remarkable anomaly. She smiled. He was in a tuxedo but it was black and the cummerbund was not some insane color with a matching insane tie. He had something bulky in his hand and she glanced at it which seemed to remind him what he was supposed to do with it.

“This is for you,” he said, offering the flimsy plastic box with the corsage inside, rattling around. “I can put it on,” he added, taking the undeniably pretty cluster of white rosebuds and narrow ribbon out, neither of them noticing when Caroline took the box from Mary’s hand. He slid the elastic band over her hand and let his hand rest at her wrist. She felt like he’d never touched her before, though he had, a million less important times, and just his fingers, circling her wrist like a bracelet, warm and light and electric, felt like a million times more than any time Gus had ever kissed her.

“It’s perfect,” she said, looking down at where he still held her. “It matches exactly.”

“Give me a little credit. It’s the Snow Ball, you are all wearing white dresses, it wasn’t rocket science to pick it out,” he said. “But you look…your dress,” he trailed off.

“I know. It’s a change from my marching band uniform,” she said as wry as she could be to mask her sudden shyness with him, the tuba to her French horn.

“It’s, you’re beautiful, Mary. That’s not a change though,” he said. She knew he was a seventeen year old boy but for a moment, it hadn’t felt that way at all. Then she thought how she’d tell Emma as soon as they got there and they were back to high school, right where they belonged.


	7. Chapter 7

“I don’t think that counts as retro, Jed. It’s just old,” Mary said, flicking through the pages of _Vogue_ ; Caroline always got her a subscription for her birthday and it made a change from the medical journals that required her full attention or the _New Yorker_ , which required less but which was still designed for her to actually read and not just look at pictures. It was the only picture worth looking at just now, since Jed hadn’t been able to get the TV to show anything but snow since he’d turned it on 45 minutes ago.

“It’s Plum, she did something to the antenna. It was fine yesterday,” he muttered. He and Plum had an ever-shifting and complicated relationship, one that defied standard geopolitical analogy, but today, he’d decided she was the cause of the television’s inability to show anything except the mesmerizing fractal snow on its slightly bulbous grey screen.

“Jed. Granny Glad got that TV in like 1984. It’s a miracle it turns on,” Mary said. Everyone had their quirks but some were more predictable than others. She wouldn’t have pegged Jed for a guy who was super into vintage housewares and appliances, but the number of weekends spent at flea markets and the look of transfixed delight on his face when they went to clean out Granny Glad’s five bedroom colonial so she could split her time between the condos in Truro and Miami as a true snowbird and he’d been told he could take whatever he wanted home with him had made it clear. Crystal. Unlike the TV screen. He’d had better luck with an old record player and she’d hoped he’d stick with collecting original rock albums on vinyl, but no such luck.

“What did you want to watch?” she asked. She was tired, she’d probably fall asleep during whatever he chose, but it was something to say that leavened the steady flow of growled curses emerging from his mouth. The screen stayed a field of monochrome confetti.

“The local PBS station was rerunning Downton, I thought you’d like that,” he said. 

“I would, but I’d rather just actually get to hang out with you, so maybe the TV repair can wait until the weekend? Or we can watch something on the laptop, it’s charged,” she said. He was the sweetest, most exasperating man, kind of like her cat. 

“Ok, but I’m only postponing this—don’t think you can get rid of the TV and I won’t notice.” He wiped his hands on his jeans and came over to the couch. “Scoot over, or I’ll be in your lap.”

“That was the general idea,” she said, tossing _Vogue_ to the coffee table and reaching up for him. The snow fell on the screen, without the howling of a blizzard, but neither one of them bothered with it. They hardly noticed when Plum did something and a slightly out-of-focus snowfall at Downton appeared, Matthew on one knee.


	8. Chapter 8

“Fine. Snow,” Jed said from the top bunk. The room was as dark as it ever got, which was dark enough for most chronically exhausted residents to have fallen asleep in about 12 nanoseconds, but he was on with Mary and evidently, in this regard as in all others, she was not most residents. The ER seemed quiet but they both knew enough not to say it aloud and they were supposed to be sleeping but he’d been so aware of her lying beneath him he couldn’t settle and had softly called, “Mary, you awake?” expecting silence, not “Yeah, just running the list in my head.”

“You’ll never fall asleep that way,” he’d said and she’d agreed quickly.

“Oh, I know. I usually think about other stuff, I just, tonight, it’s not working as well.”

He’d asked, because who wouldn’t, but he’d been quite surprised when she told him that she generally fell asleep recasting modern movies with Golden Age Hollywood stars though she’d admitted “sometimes I punt and go Brat Pack.” They’d already gone through The Avengers and Ghostbusters.

“Oh, that’s easy. James Mason or Claude Rains,” she answered. “Donald Sutherland was way too physically imposing.”

“Peeta?” he said. He didn’t really care and he didn’t know half the actors she mentioned but he liked hearing her voice this way, without any of the brisk efficiency she was known for on the wards, a warm contralto that made him think all sorts of things, wonder if it was worth the risk of asking her out when they were on-service together.

“So, like a young Van Johnson. Or Emilio Estevez. You know, like Breakfast Club era,” she said. He was picturing her below, her eyes shut, the thin blanket defining the curve of her.

“Katniss?” He was running out of people he knew from the movie. “You know, you don’t sound sleepy at all.”

“I usually don’t play this with another person, it’s different,” she said and paused. “This is harder…” she mused and he thought, yes, it was hard to fall asleep when all he wanted to do was ask her questions so she would talk to him, Scherazade in the night, those New England vowels so unexpectedly erotic...

“Because there really weren’t a lot of Latina actresses then and she’s very clearly not white, Katniss, in the book,” she added, dashing his hopes. “Maybe Lupe Velez?”

“Mmm. Good one,” he said, trying to think of someone else from the movie, something else worth saying at all.

“This isn’t making me sleepy, Jed, but it’s nice. It’s, I like talking to you about stuff besides work and the Sox. Aren’t you tired though? At least one of us should go to sleep,” she said. He heard the small smile in her voice and the way it went away, but not the softness of her tone.

“How ‘bout I tell you a story? I’ll try to think of something dull and then you can just doze off. I’ll channel my inner Summers,” he said. He imagined her lying next to him, tucking a long strand of that chestnut hair behind her ear, stroking her arm and feeling her fall asleep next to him.

“’Kay,” she said and he started to speak, thinking of something simple and unexciting, “My grandmother had a big attic and we liked to go poking around in it on rainy days…”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: drug abuse referenced.

God, he missed doing coke. It wasn’t something he could admit, not really, he was supposed to be over it, rehab and sobriety and always putting a palm flat on the wine glass at a restaurant, but sometimes he just wanted it so badly. He probably ought to tell someone or bring it up in his sporadic therapy sessions, but he didn’t want to. He liked having the memories untouched by anyone’s mind except his own, he liked the variable high-def focus and the balmy, vibrant, Caribbean intensity of them, the lines almost trembling before him, the fucking exquisite feeling of his forefinger against his gums. It would be so much harder to get any snow now that he wasn’t in college, it wasn’t worth the effort, the risk—pills were much more dangerous to him because they were so _available_ and he’d managed to steer clear, so he didn’t try that hard to push the thoughts of cocaine away. They were just thoughts, he reminded himself when shame started to come in around the edges, he was still in control. 

Mary had figured it out somehow, but all she said from her side of the bed was “We can’t go back there, Jed. Not again,” her back facing him and he’d known he’d have to make sure he was right. He left a message on the confidential voicemail after he drank a glass of water in the 2 am dark kitchen, left the glass on the counter, then climbed back in bed and whispered, “We won’t, I won’t,” into her tangled hair.


	10. Chapter 10

“Watch the regulars,” Emma said under her breath. “And be ready to get out if it gets ugly” she added, twirling the swizzle stick in her Manhattan. It had been his idea to go out for drinks after work at the bar down the street and he hadn’t really listened to Emma when she suggested they pick another place or just go out for Thai. “It’ll be fun, come on, we can blow off some steam,” he’d cajoled them all and one by one, they’d agreed. Emma had been the hold-out but she’d been so vague about her demurral, he’d finally just said “Fine, we’ll go and meet up with you later for dinner” and she’d then weirdly acquiesced.

“Adriana Caselotti is the correct answer to the question ‘Who was the voice of the original Snow White in the 1937 Disney animated feature ?’ Table 4. MVP. Again,” the bartender called out. “Seems like someone wasn’t bragging with that username.”

MVP was not an attempt to boast though, Jed knew, it was Mary Victoria Phinney and it turned out she was basically terrifyingly good at Trivia Night. 

“You could have been, I don’t know, more direct, Emma,” Jed sort of hissed. “I’ve never seen you hold back on your opinion before.” Mary was nursing a rum & Coke but she was still sharp enough to pick up on the side conversation while simultaneously trouncing the entire bar. Everyone at their table but Sam had stopped bothering to answer questions; he filled in the tiny gaps in Mary’s knowledge of cricket Test Match champions and John Clancy novels. Otherwise, she reigned supreme.

“Okay, final round,” the bartender announced after Mary whizzed through a few more questions. Jed could appreciate the growing rancor in the bar though Mary appeared completely unaware of it. He’d seen that expression on her face when she was running a code, that immediate evaluation and decision, the light in her eyes when the vitals picked up, when they could slow the pace because it clear the patient would live, the little half-smile on her face as she stripped off her gloves and balled them up to toss in the trash. He’d never seen her miss. He was sure she’d answer this question right, as she had all the others, but he couldn’t tell if the hostility in the bar would simmer down or boil over.

“That’s it, everyone, we have a winner. Ghazal, ‘form of verse popular in Persia, favored by Rumi and Hafiz.’ Table 4, MVP, you’ve won the pot. Come on over in a few to collect your prize,” the bartender said. Mary took a last swig of her drink and stood up, flicking back her hair which was loose over her shoulders, not secured in its regular ponytail or braid. Jed wondered if he should offer to walk over with her and he scanned the bar. There were plenty of surly glares, but no one else was standing up. Emma put her hand on his forearm and said, 

“Just give her a minute. She worked it out last time too. I just wasn’t sure how the crowd would be.”

They waited a few minutes and Mary came back to the table and put a wad of bills down.

“Drinks are on me. I’m starving, can we get dinner now?” she said. They all nodded and started to put their coats on, shoved gloves into pockets, phones into bags except for Byron, who’d tagged along and still wore a phone holster on his belt.

“Hey, guys, next round is on MVP, so just cool your jets,” the bartender sang out and the general irritability switched in an instant to a jocular hail-fellow-well-met vibe. Jed looked at Mary. She winked and said, “I know Emma said Thai but I have a craving for fra diavolo. Think we can persuade her to go to Giacomo’s?”

“Yeah, I think so, MVP.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Have you seen Mary?” Jed asked the nursing station at large. 

It was the most efficient way to find out where the hell she was, over a half hour late to meet him in the lobby. They’d agreed to take one car so they could rush home and change before meeting his parents at the insanely expensive restaurant they’d insisted on, where the reservation had taken 6 months and at least three phone calls to his mother’s former sorority sisters, to secure. And yet, now it was 40 minutes past the time they’d arranged to meet and still no Mary and 4 texts from Ezra, each one making Jed dread the evening more. Not on Ezra’s behalf, he was predisposed to like Mary and once they chatted about his time in Bavaria, the deal would be, as they said, sealed, but Jed knew his mother would need hardly any reason to rail against Mary. He’d say he didn’t care about her opinion, but clearly he did. And now 45 minutes and no Mary.

“Try 10-oh-5. I saw her go in there a while ago,” Bridget sang out. She was about to retire but everyone knew she was the most important person on 6 and possibly in the whole hospital. The dirt she was rumored to know was very, very… dirty. Filthy, in fact. She’d taken to Mary right away, so Jed headed over to room 1005 and prepared to use a carefully neutral tone, reminding Mary of the time, how they had to be going...

“‘Plop, on Peter’s head,’” Mary said. He’d poked his head into the doorway and there she was, reading a book to a small African-American boy who favored the Power Rangers and Doc McStuffins based on his balloons. They were crammed together in the bed, the little boy leaning against Mary, the book open before them. She didn’t notice him in the doorway, but the little boy did.

“Who are you?” he said, not welcoming at all.

“I’m Dr. Foster, I came to check on Dr. Phinney,” he replied. 

“Are you her boyfriend? Dr. Mary’s?” He’d never been asked in such a piping voice but it was a fair question.

“Gabe! That’s not--”

“I hope so,” he said, completely serious. Mary’s eyes darted to him and he smiled at her.

“Do you want to hear the rest of the story? It’s called ‘A Snowy Day,’ and the boy has a big stick. He gets to play in the snow. All day,” Gabe said.

“That sounds good. Go on, Dr. Mary, we’re waiting,” he said.

Mary turned back to the book and resumed reading. She didn’t beckon him over and he wasn’t tempted; he liked what he could see, how comfortably close Gabe leaned, Mary’s posture relaxed. She turned the pages and paused so Gabe could point and ask questions. Before the book was quite over, the book to Jed’s right opened and an attractive African-American woman with eyes and cheekbones very similar to Gabe’s walked in, apologizing and thanking Mary with every step. Mary waved it all off and left the book on the table that hooked over the hospital bed, Gabe’s mother bustling about with Tupperware and some stuffed animals.

Outside the room, Mary started explaining right away, “I know, I know we said 5:30 but she called the nursing station and court was running behind, she’s getting a restraining order and there’s no one else who could come sit with him.”

“Mary, it’s okay. I just want to know—you always carry a copy of ‘A Snowy Day’ in your bag? For emergencies?” he asked, slinging her bag over his shoulder along with his. They’d be late, that was certain, but he couldn’t be sorry.

“That was supposed to go under the gift tree. But I thought Gabe needed it more. I can get something else for the tree,” she said. They were alone in the elevator now and that was a small blessing; she was rarely averse to an arm around her waist if they were the only ones there and the elevator was slow enough to always give fair warning before someone else came on. Tonight, they rode alone, the whole way.


	12. Chapter 12

As soon as they got in the Uber, Jed spoke.

“That was excellent and amazing and thought-provoking…and I’m still hungry.”

Mary laughed. They were trying to go on more conventional dates, that is, not just hang around at home or the hospital, watching something that happened to be on and then ignoring it to make out. At home, making out quickly became X-rated, in a good way. The best way. But Jed had gotten a bee in his bonnet that he wasn’t courting her properly and she was hard-pressed to stop him because they’d gone on some lovely dates and he was so entertaining planning them, googling and scattering yellow-Post-its covered in his chicken scratch everywhere on the kitchen table. There’d been a whale-watch and the Open Night at the observatory and the gondola on the Charles, the MIT Museum and a chowder taste-off. There’d been a scavenger hunt with three dozen red tea roses to collect. He hadn’t told her much about the dinner plans tonight, other than to dress a little more nicely than for Cheesecake Factory, as if that was a bar for attire she used on a regular basis. She’d put on a chunky turquoise necklace and a black sweater dress and called it a day.

She’d been intrigued by the molecular gastronomy menu though there were some dishes she had no interest in trying and the chef did seem to be unduly invested in squid ink, but the spot prawns with bacon snow and tomato gel had seemed like a relatively safe bet. And it had been, except that she had to agree that the portions had been rather petite and that while she intellectually appreciated the play of textures and the vivid carnelian color, the ephemeral, porky snow, she was viscerally just this side of starving.

“Can you stop at Tasty Burger?” Mary told the driver. “We’ll just be a minute, we can get you some fries if you like.”


	13. Chapter 13

He’d majored in chemistry and minored, if you could call it that, in econ. Sociology, linguistics, anthropology, comp lit—he’d avoided them all except for what he had to take for the required credits and he’d still been accepted easily into med school. But he knew, like everyone sort of knew, the thing about the Eskimos and their hundred words for snow and he read the article in the Post, in between bites of an egg sandwich and swallows of near-scalding coffee, about how it wasn’t a hoax, after all, they had had, well, maybe not 100, but 50 words for snow. It made sense to him, of a kind he wouldn’t confess to her, because he had at least 50 words that meant he loved Mary— _beautiful_ did now and _sweetheart_ but also _challenge_ and _poem_ and _desire_. Jed wouldn’t tell her, because she’d get shy or shrug or ruffle his hair, but he whispered the words along her spine when he kissed her, breathed them into her mouth, traced them with his fingertips on the softness of her belly, her slick, parted thighs. When she came around him, the words shuddered between them, every place he was pressed into her, where she clung to him and when she lay in his arms afterwards, flushed and content, so herself and all his, he ran his fingers through her hair and left a word on every strand and his heart beat them, as strongly as it could. He thought he made out an echo if he held a palm between her breasts, louder than her voice had been in his ear, _oh love oh Jedediah_.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't decide on a good plot for *a* story about snow but I had lots of little glimmers, so I wrote them all and then made sure I had 13 so I could use everyone's favorite title, for once, not from Emily Dickinson. There is a pretty obvious lack of Emmry here, apologies :)


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